Whatever happened to law firm loyalty?
Lawyers used to spend their whole careers at one firm. Nowadays they often count their tenure at firms in months. How did this happen - and how can firms stop the bleeding?
By Susan Goldberg
Time was, when a lawyer joined a law firm, it was considered a lifetime commitment. Associates weathered good times and bad until they made partner; partners prevailed, for richer or poorer, until they retired.
But partnership, like marriage, is no longer forever. The "till death - or retirement - do us part" relationship between lawyers and law firms is being replaced by serial monogamy, a "let's live together for a while and see what happens" approach.
For example, legal recruiter The Counsel Network posted a survey on its home page asking respondents how long they expected to stay in their current law job. Nearly half the said they'd be likely to change jobs within the next three months; another 37 per cent planned to move within a year.
And in the United States, a comprehensive survey conducted by Interim Legal Services (now Spherion) reported that 56 per cent of associates plan to seek out a different job within the next two years.
So is law firm loyalty dead? Not necessarily. But the definition of loyalty itself is changing. And firms that fail to acknowledge this, and to adapt to this shift in lawyers' priorities, may find themselves losing the battle to not only attract, but also retain, top talent.
Opportunities knock
The new mobility is a phenomenon fuelled, in part, by profitable times. Law firms - like the business clients they serve - are merging and expanding as they scramble to serve national and international markets. They're recruiting not only associates, but also seasoned partners with mature practices who are attracted to the backing of a strong national franchise.
For example, Tom Roper, a 25-year veteran of the Vancouver firm Alexander Holburn Beaudin and Lang, left his firm last June to open Ogilvy Renault's West Coast office. He took with him the successful labour and employment law practice he headed, along with ten lawyers, plus support staff.
"I was not looking to leave Alexander Holburn," says Roper. "But the opportunity was intriguing, for me and for my partners and associates in the practice".
"I could see what was happening internationally and nationally, both in terms of business and law firm reorganizations, and this was an opportunity to be part of a firm that really has its eye on the future, that is positioning itself to take advantage of business restructuring - and also a firm able to defend its existing position in the legal community."
But as law firms grow larger, they can also become less attractive to lawyers who yearn for a more personal style of practice. Jim Hodgson cites "conflicts and overhead" as two of the main reasons he and four other senior partners left Toronto's Blake Cassels & Graydon last January to form Hodgson Tough Shields DesBrisay O'Donnell.
As overhead increases, and clients become less willing to accommodate firms that also represent the competition, many lawyers look to join, or form, a boutique-style practice.
"When I articled there in 1970," says Hodgson, "there were fewer than 60 lawyers at Blakes. When I left, there were nearly 400. I had partners I had never met. Here, because it's a much smaller group, it's more intimate. And there's a lot of pleasure in that."
Self-fulfillment
The key word is "pleasure." Lawyers on the move are looking for more than a heftier paycheque or the promise of a steady job. Increasingly, they're determined to seek out new challenges, professional growth and personal happiness in their work. And if they can't find that kind of fulfillment in their current jobs, they'll look elsewhere.
"At the associate level, we're seeing people move overseas because they want to increase their international exposure and the quality of transactional work they do," says recruiter Jonathan Marsden, of Marsden Nagata Legal Search. "And they want to be in Europe and go skiing in the Alps or [spend] a weekend in Barcelona".
"I think a lot of the younger lawyers find working internationally a lot more lucrative," adds Ted Remillard, senior consultant with QD/TMP Legal. "They find a very high quality of work, lucractive in terms of money and quality of work. And perhaps it's perceived to be more of a sexy opportunity to have worked internationally."
Remillard gets many requests from lawyers who would like to move internationally. Typical destinations of choice are California, New York, London or Asia, meaning Hong Kong or Singapore.
Globetrotting isn't the only perceived avenue for greater lawyer fulfillment; for many, the corporate life beckons.
"We have a fair number of people who want to get out of private practice because they hate the lifestyle and want to go in-house," says Marsden. "They have more control over their personal life than they did in private practice."
For Art Bensler, a former partner at Russell & DuMoulin (now Fasken Martineau DuMoulin), the in-house environment triumphed over the constraints of private practice. Now corporate counsel at Teekay Shipping in Vancouver, he doesn't miss "the tyranny of the billable minute" or the narrow focus that characterized his practice. Rather, the move was a chance to use his legal expertise on all sides of the table.
"Teekay presented an opportunity for a very broad-based legal experience, with a lot of challenging work," says Bensler. "The big difference, though, is that I'm asked to bring my business judgment to bear. Lawyers aren't supposed to be giving business advice. But when you're in-house, that's part of the job description, and that allows for a lot of creativity."
And then there are lawyers who move because of personality clashes, because they feel under-appreciated or undervalued, or because they're trying to develop a practice area that's not a core area of their current firm.
Partners who feel they're supporting weaker partners will move, says Marsden, and weaker partners will themselves often move to smaller firms. And with firms lengthening the partnership track, some associates have become cynical about the possibility of making partner (or making partner fast enough), a cynicism that results in the pursuit of greener pastures.
But while lawyers on the move talk about opportunity and happiness, rarely do they define those factors solely, if at all, in terms of money. Competitive salaries can be an effective method of attracting talent, but they're not a particularly sound retention strategy, especially if they're seen by firms as a way to justify longer hours.
"Salaries have gone up dramatically," says Harry Fogul, managing partner at the Toronto firm Aird & Berlis. "And what I hear is the expectation by law firms that somebody's got to pay for it, and it can't be all the clients or all the partners. So they require increased productivity from the associates."
Where salary is the motivating factor in a move, Canadian firms generally can't compete with deeper pockets south of the border. And in most cases, it wouldn't make good economic sense to try. "There's really nothing anyone can do in Canada to stop a lawyer from going to New York and doubling his or her salary," says Remillard. "We don't have the same kind of market."
The new breed
What all this means is that a new breed of legal employee is developing, described by Spherion as the "emergent" worker, who subscribes to workplace values radically different from those of the "traditional" employee.
The latter, says Greg Mazares, president of Spherion's legal group, are more likely to equate loyalty with tenure, and see advancement as a function of length of service. They view job change as damaging to career paths, and require job security as a driver of commitment.
The emergent legal employee, on the other hand, equates loyalty and advancement with contribution and performance. He or she sees job change as a vehicle for growth, takes responsibility for developing and driving his or her career path, and actually rejects job security as a motivator for commitment.
Take Michael Goldberg, an associate at Toronto's Minden Gross Grafstein & Greenstein, who may just typify the emergent legal employee. At the age of 30, he's already practised at firms in Winnipeg, Calgary, and Toronto, and worked in-house at the accounting firm Deloitte and Touche.
His moves, he says, were a function of "being 27, single, living in Winnipeg, and thinking that there was a big world out there to explore." Most important, however, he was looking for a city and a firm with the right "fit."
Goldberg thinks he's found his niche in his current firm, and stresses that he has no intention of making another move. He suggests that law firms take their cues from accounting firms when it comes to dealing with employees who leave.
"My employers at Deloitte actually acted as my references, and were nothing short of wonderful in how they handled the move," he observes. "They viewed it both as an opportunity to cross-pollinate, and to help me develop so that I would be the best that I could be, and felt that it was positive in all ways. And I would say it is, because every time I get a chance to plug them, I do. I can't tell people enough how well they treated me there."
Sometimes, however, parting is a bitter affair. "I haven't had a divorce, but it strikes me how much like a divorce this kind of breakup is," says a senior lawyer, after leaving her firm of nearly two decades to go to another Toronto practice.
"Even if you handle the move with delicacy and grace and aplomb, as I certainly tried to do, you can't help but leave bruised feelings," she says. "There's a lot of anger towards a partner who leaves; the leaving is seen as a kind of rejection of all that those remaining hold dear. There are people who never speak to you again, or who never speak to you civilly again."
Stop the bleeding
What can law firms do to avoid break-ups, painful and otherwise? In some cases, nothing. Firms must recognize that a certain degree of attrition is not only inevitable but also healthy, and plan accordingly. Even when lawyers are happy where they are, opportunities can arise that are just too good to pass up.
"In my old firm's case," says Roper, "probably nothing could have changed the course of events, in the sense that I wasn't dissatisfied. At the end of the day, after 25 years with one firm, this presented a challenge. I had to ask myself, 'Am I going to pass on this and then look back and wonder what it would have been like?'''
Perhaps the most obvious retention strategy - and the most difficult to implement - lies in creating a congenial working environment.
"I don't think it takes very much to make every lawyer in a firm feel connected," says Patricia Olasker, a former managing partner at Toronto's McMillan Binch who made the move to Davies, Ward & Beck nearly three years ago.
"But you need a strong managing partner whose principal role is to make sure each lawyer feels like he or she has a place in the firm," she says. "If people feel very connected in and important to the place they work in, they're not going to be looking for opportunity."
Mazares notes that, according to the Interim study, the number-one reason that associates cite for attrition is poor supervisor skills and attitudes. He recommends formal management training for supervising attorneys, to help them address blind spots in management skills and develop their strengths. And if firms are really interested in retention, he suggests, why not tie a portion of supervisor's compensation to it?
Breaking down barriers and establishing trust between associates and partners are other key elements in creating an attractive working atmosphere, experts say. Whether it's through mentorship programs, social events like lunches or softball games, or team-building retreats, associates learn that they can draw on the support and experience of senior lawyers.
Associates do need to know that they're valuable to their employers. In an effort to give his junior lawyers a greater sense of ownership in the firm, Gregory Bowden, an attorney at Vancouver's Lawson Lundell who recently ended his term as managing partner, instigated associate meetings in addition to partners' meetings.
"The executive committee goes over the firm's entire business plan with the associates, just as they would with the partners," Bowden says. "[It makes] the associates really feel as though they're part of the future of the firm."
Flexibility benefits
Several firms have hired retention officers, charged with the responsibility of enhancing the experience of their lawyers and doing everything they can to hold on to them. Deborah Glatter, director of Professional Development and Student Programs at the Toronto firm Cassels Brock & Blackwell, says a certain degree of flexibility can help keep associates happy.
In order to spend more time with her family, for example, one associate has negotiated an agreement with the firm to work only four days a week. If a lawyer, either through circumstance or interest, wants to switch practice areas, Cassels Brock is generally happy to comply.
"A new mother who has a child in day care may not be able to stay until two in the morning on an intermittent basis to close a deal," says Glatter. "But she may be able to maintain a litigation practice where she's offering support to more senior lawyers on a much more regular schedule."
Flexibility can also mean less focus on billable hours. "Many people simply don't want to bill 2,000 or more hours a year," says Mazares.
"And some of the firms that are having major attrition problems are those that are less flexible as far as allowing different types of work schedules - allowing for the fact that there may be some great attorneys out there that they're simply not going to get 2,000 billable hours out of."
Increasingly, firms are sending associates on secondment to clients, often to cover a general counsel's maternity leave or to see a deal through to completion. The associate gains experience, and the firm forges a stronger bond with the client.
"It's a double-edged sword, though," Fogul points out, because of the possibility that the associate might not return. "You want to cement the relationship, but you don't want to lose a rising star."
Fogul also cites a high level of responsibility and a shorter partnership track as informal retention strategies. Because Aird & Berlis considers partnership for associates after just three years, it necessarily gives first-and second-year lawyers a great deal of responsibility, in order to test their abilities.
"We have first-year lawyers doing motions and trials. And I think a lot of them like that responsibility; they like that they're not in the back room. The junior lawyers, certainly, who are go-getters, obviously don't tend to leave."
In addition to these strategies, Mazares recommends that firms conduct not only exit interviews, but also entrance interviews with new hires. "The firm really needs to understand why the professional joined the firm in the first place, and what her or his expectations are relative to the firm," he says. "And they should be checking back periodically to make sure that those expectations that they took the time to learn about are actually being met."
Remillard notes that exit interviews can themselves be exercises in retention, not only to help firms find out how they can hang on to their talent, but as an exercise in bridge-building, especially for those who have left to go overseas.
When it comes to raising a family, many Canadian lawyers abroad choose to come home. Firms can use the exit interview as one tool to establish an open-door policy for departing lawyers - and perhaps regain former employees with valuable international experience in the process.
"I often heard from candidates that have left their firms for international opportunities that, if they came back, they would only go to the firm they left," Remillard says.
Finally, firms might consider new models for hiring attorneys, including flexible staffing strategies and the use of temporary lawyers on a project basis.
Instead of hiring 50 associates a year and culling them over time, a firm might hire half that number and hire temporary lawyers as needed. Recruiters are often able to place experienced temporary lawyers - who no longer want to practise full-time - on a flat-fee basis.
As firms contemplate their retention strategies, they should take to heart that most lawyers - emergent and otherwise - don't go into jobs with the intention of leaving. Breaking up is still a hard thing to do.
"I suspect people never leave a firm cavalierly," says Olasker. "It's an exceptionally difficult thing to do. So much of what you contribute to a law firm derives from your practice and your clients. There's such a big risk that you may leave all those behind, that I think it's quite incredible that people move around as much as they do."
Susan Goldberg is a Toronto-based freelance writer.
